Service utilities are becoming a major focus in the IT services industry. For consumers, one benefit of a service utility is being able to purchase as much of a service as needed at any given time without purchasing the complete infrastructure. For example, customers can purchase a service such as, e.g., CPU cycles, quantities of data storage, or mailboxes, without having to invest in a complete server environment. Service utilities allow customers to control their monthly expenses and purchase only the services they need.
However, existing pricing models assume non-negative rates of growth. The ability of customers to increase or decrease their consumption level at any time creates a need for new service utility pricing models.